Usage Of A Flying Mount Is Too Obvious, It Should Be More Unique!

I want to address a serious issue in this thread.

Players are lazy to travel in the game. They want everything they can do in a capital city. Everything should be close, so less travel is needed. It's easy to obtain a mount or even a fly mount. Also much traveling is done by portals and hearthstones, which makes people even more lazy. For every inch people need to travel their flying mount is used. Which brings me to the point:

Usage of a flying mount is too obvious, it should be more unique again!

I think it would be very cool if flying becomes an alternate way of travelling instead of THE way to travel. Flying your mount should be more unique. Flying should have more risks and more dangers. So flying becomes something you really need to think about if you want to use it or not. There are some things that should be changed for that, but it still should be easy to access.
I understand it isn't thinkable to raise the costs to get your flying riding skill and your mount. Also because most players have already bought that (long time ago). I am thinking why flying itself isn't made harder to use.

Some examples:
- Longer casttime for fly mounts, shorter for ground mounts.
- Limited flying time before your mount becomes exhausted. Unlimited ground mount usage in comparison.
- A long cooldown for your fly mount so it can rest, while ground mount get a real short cooldown so you can use that quicker.
- More risks in the sky, more dangers in the sky. AFK'ing in the air won't be an option anymore.
- More dangers means you need more protection in the sky, so a couple class based attacks are introduced for use on your fly mount.
- Flying movement becomes harder. Flying reckless and irresponsible too much might cause you to dismount.

I am convinced that changes like this really makes the flying more unique and more epic to use. It can improve the experience of player significant while traveling along Azeroth and Draenor/Outlands. People are respecting both their ground mounts and fly mounts. The game will be better with it.

- Longer casttime for fly mounts, shorter for ground mounts.
- More risks in the sky, more dangers in the sky. AFK'ing in the air won't be an option anymore.

These options are plausible.

Originally Posted by Zeror

- Limited flying time before your mount becomes exhausted. Unlimited ground mount usage in comparison.
- A long cooldown for your fly mount to it can rest, while ground mount get a real short cooldown so you can use that quicker.
- More dangers means you need more protection in the sky, so a couple class based attacks are introduced for use on your fly mount.
- Flying movement becomes harder. Flying reckless and irresponsible too much might cause you to dismount.

Just have a pack of angry birds in the air that patrol or can just pop up from trees/bushes below that are faster then your flyspeed. They do not hurt you but dismount you. So flying becomes a "challenge".

But imo they should just keep Draenor without flying until atleast the next expansion... and then have flying again. The next expansion has the new land also not available for flying until the next expansion etc etc

- Longer casttime for fly mounts, shorter for ground mounts.
As long as it's not a full minute to mount a flying mount, I'm okay with this.

- Limited flying time before your mount becomes exhausted. Unlimited ground mount usage in comparison.
Could create some unforseen problems. What if you're forced to land in a place you can't safely get away from without a flying mount? Like on a rock somewhere in a mountain range?

- A long cooldown for your fly mount so it can rest, while ground mount get a real short cooldown so you can use that quicker.
Why introduce cooldowns for ground mounts at all? How long would your flying mount cooldown be?

- More risks in the sky, more dangers in the sky. AFK'ing in the air won't be an option anymore.
This I like.

- More dangers means you need more protection in the sky, so a couple class based attacks are introduced for use on your fly mount.
This needs to be done really well.

While I wouldn't mind some extra restrictions on flying mounts, they can't become a hassle to use. Ideally, peole would see flying and ground mounts as equally attractive choices. Right now, they're not, but I'm not sure tipping the balance completely in the other direction is the way to go, either. If no-one is using flying mounts, why have flying mounts at all?

Something I would like is an extra movement speed level for ground mounts. 150% or something.

- Limited flying time before your mount becomes exhausted. Unlimited ground mount usage in comparison.Not too sure how well this would work.

- A long cooldown for your fly mount so it can rest, while ground mount get a real short cooldown so you can use that quicker.I don't think cooldowns on mounts are the way to go.

- More risks in the sky, more dangers in the sky. AFK'ing in the air won't be an option anymore.I agree with this as long as it's not just tons of mobs capable of dismounting. That'd just be lazy design. It would need to be those kinds of mobs + natural influence like snow blizzards and storms capable of striking you mid-flight with lightning.

- More dangers means you need more protection in the sky, so a couple class based attacks are introduced for use on your fly mount.Sounds cool, like throwing your weapon at a mob as a Warrior and stuff.

- Flying movement becomes harder. Flying reckless and irresponsible too much might cause you to dismount.This is getting a little too far from what flying is about in my opinion.

What problem now suddently everyone has with flying? It's an awesome feature and one of the things that really makes WOW better than other MMOs, people complaining on free epix or whatever it's ok, but on flying? -.-

Longer cast time (say, something like 3-5 sec, as opposed to the 1.5 all mounts have atm) sounds good. I'm also quite fond of the "limited flight time" idea, which in my opinion could be expanded to say what you actually mean.

I'd envision it like this, with Flying mounts having some sort of "Energy" bar, shared between all mounts (tied to your character), and therefore also applying to Druid Flying Form. When the bar is depleted, mount is fatigued and stops flying immediately (crashing down if on the air). However, as soon as some energy is regained, it can fly again - no need to wait for the bar to refill to full, a cooldown, or anything like that.

For some rough figures, let's say you have 500 Energy.
- Flying: High energy consumption. 2 Energy per sec - 250 seconds, little over 4 minutes of uninterrupted flight
- Stationary on the air: Low energy drain. 0.8 Energy per sec - 625 seconds, bit over 10 minutes of AFK in the air.
- On ground, riding: No energy drain.
- On ground, stationary; or on foot: Regains energy at a high rate. +5 Energy per sec - 100 seconds to recharge from 0 to full.

Reallistically, Flying would remain useful for flying short or medium distances. Even while farming, it'd take a long time to deplete the bar (since you keep dismounting to gather resources, refilling the bar in the process).

Now, something like this would require flight paths to be improved; both in terms of speed and flexibility.

Longer cast time (say, something like 3-5 sec, as opposed to the 1.5 all mounts have atm) sounds good. I'm also quite fond of the "limited flight time" idea, which in my opinion could be expanded to say what you actually mean.

I'd envision it like this, with Flying mounts having some sort of "Energy" bar. Energy bar is shared between all mounts (tied to your character), and therefore also applying to Druid Flying Form. When the bar is depleted, mount is fatigued and stops flying immediately (crashing down if on the air). However, as soon as some energy is regained, it can fly again - no need to wait for the bar to refill to full, a cooldown, or anything like that.

Reallistically, Flying would remain useful for flying short or medium distances. Even while farming, it'd take a long time to deplete the bar (since you keep dismounting to gather resources, refilling the bar in the process).

Now, something like this would require flight paths to be improved; both in terms of speed and flexibility.

Now this, I like.

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Originally Posted by Picander

Limited flying time before my mount becomes exhausted? I have like 50 flying mounts. The other 49 mounts would become exhausted because I'm flying on one?

You're right. It makes no sense that those 49 mounts you keep in your bag or conjure up out of thin air get exhausted as well!

Well they would still be in the cities technically (zone). Still it is a bit lame to just think this will greatly increase people in cities (visible).

Atleast on my server loads are on the ground doing stuff vs the hovering. I know, I regularly fly around above Stormwind... I see maybe 5 people flying around. And perhaps some more if they hop from one section of the city to another. But thats like not worth mentioning. They will still be on the ground longer then hovering above.

They aren't going to remove flying to old azeroth anyway. Just Draenor. So it would be 1 city... wooptidoo.